(Nov 22) I had the pleasure
of cyber-sitting in on the First International
SpeleoMovie Web Festival yesterday. It was sposored by
NUG (NapoliUnderground)
and moderated on-line by one of the members of the
organization. I am claustrophobic, so even watching a
film about the recent daring and arduous rescue of a
spelunker trapped hundreds of feet underground in
northern Italy gives me chills, but it was one of the
films on the agenda, and it was well-done. Also, there
was one about cleaning out a WWII bomb shelter in
Milan to turn it into a museum and a film about Celtic
burial chambers in central Italy. I'm from a
generation when caves and graphics meant throwing
camp-fire-flickered hand shadows on the cave wall
after the hunt, so it took me some time to get used to
the technology: watching the video-feed, trying to
keep up with the running chat and chime in every once
in a while. The videos and moderator comments were in
Italian, but NUG English-language translator, Larry Ray, from way over in
Gulfport, Mississippi, kept up a running English
explanation for those who needed it. There were a
handful of people on the chat-line and about two dozen
people watching from wherever. I look forward to the
next one, but I'm still not going down in any damned
caves!

(Nov 22) If you have ever
wondered if it's possible to sneak through a
toll barrier on the Naples tangenziale highway by sticking
right behind the car of the paying customer in front
of you, the short answer is "yes"! I was NOT trying to
cheat the benevolent city government out of 80 cents;
I was in the wrong line, the one that accepts only
prepaid cards—no cash, checks,
money-orders or bottle-caps, please. By the time I
noticed, it was too late. I couldn't back out
because there were cars behind me, so when the
barrier raised to let the car in front of me
through, I roared right behind him. The barrier
started to come down and stopped just short of
doing a Marie Antoinette number on my car; it
lifted back up and I was away! Heh-heh, I
gloated. Let's
see them get their 80 cents out of me now!
So, yesterday, 15 months laters (!) I get the €10
ticket in the mail. Listen, you lowlife scofflaw,
they said, we have tried to contact you on
numerous occasions... Wrong; it was the first and
only notice. I paid and now have to go back to the
toll station and see where the camera is hidden.

(Nov
25)
The restoration of thecourt theater within the
Royal Palace have been completed and the theater has
been reopened. In spite of its prominent location, the
court theater has been one of the lesser known venues
for music and theater in the city simply because it
was closed for so long. As you may read in the main
entry (link, above) the history of this small jewel of
18th-century Naples parallels that of the famous and
larger theater of San Carlo, adjacent to the Royal
Palace.

(Dec 1)The"Wishing Tree"
for Christmas is already up in the Galleria Umberto and
collecting bescribbled scraps of paper in its
branches. The original main entry and episodes of
"treenapping" are here.

Item on this year's display of
installation art has been moved to this page.

(Dec 17) Today isFriday the 17th!
Unlike many cultures that view Friday the 13th as unlucky,
in Italy, today is the day of bad luck. The Friday
part may be traceable to the fact that Christ was
crucified on a Friday. In ancient Rome, it was, in
fact, the day on which all executions were carried out
and also the day when Romans paid their taxes. The
number 17 (and not 13) is unlucky apparently because
if you write 17 with Roman numerals as XVII, you can
rearrange those letters to read VIXI; in Latin that
means "I have lived" and is in the past perfect
tense/aspect (i.e. it describes a finished action);
thus, "I have lived and am done living. My life is
over." So, put Friday and 17 together and you have a
very unlucky day! In the smorfia,
the Neapolitan tradition of interpreting dreams as
numbers to bet on in the lottery, the number 17 is
associated with disgrazia—that
is, an accident or disaster. Thus, in Naples, if you
dream of such, bet on 17 as one of your numbers.
Interestingly, the number 13 is considered lucky in Italy
(as it is in a number of cultures in the world). In
Naples and the Campania region, in general, you might
say "tredici" (13) if you think your luck has changed
for the worse as an exhortation to regain that luck.
Having said all that, I'm not sure if the word for
"fear of Friday the 17th" is friggaheptakaidekaphobia or friggadekaheptaphobia.
Frigga was the Norse goddess for whom "Friday" is
named. I should stop now. It would be just my
Frigga-luck if my computer started to act
x^ci**%tz........

(Dec
30)
After an urgent appeal from the department of veterinary medicine of the
University of Naples, the Naples
zoo has taken in the last 100 members of a
species otherwise doomed to be butchered into
extinction—a local subspecies of the Capra aegagrus hircus,
the small domesticated Neapolitan goat. The animals
are native to the slopes of Vesuvius and have been for
many centuries. The male of the species weighs from 60
to 65 kg; the female from 50 to 55. Their tight wool
is black or dark red; they are beardless, have short
horns and long floppy ears and are as cute as the
dickens. Traditionally they have been used for their
milk to make cheese, although the male has also been
used for meat. The creatures have fallen on hard times
near Vesuvius since they tend to feed on the
distressing amount of refuse discarded in what is
supposed to be a national park. In spite of what lore
says about the formidable digestive track of goats,
they can die from ingesting delicious-looking and very
chewable discarded toy animals that are filled with
some kind of plastic. The zoo has taken them in and
now announces an "Adopt a Goat" program. I don't think
that means you take a goat home with you; it's
probably a deal where you can contribute to the care
of the animals in captivity. It's all in the name of
biological diversity, but the gene pool is now small
enough to cast doubt on whether the animals will
survive.

(Jan 8, 2011) Belated word comes to
me of the passing of Mr.
Aldo Sinigallia in October of last year. He
died peacefully at the glorious age of 99 years; he
was the oldest member of the Jewish community in
Naples, a lover of music and literature, and a
gentleman. He retained a fine tenor voice into
advanced years, though he never realized his dream of
becoming an opera singer. As a young man, since he was
a Jew in Fascist Italy, he was denied entrance to the
professions and the university. He got great
satisfaction almost 20 years ago when, at the age of
80 he became the second oldest university graduate in
Italian history. He wrote his graduate thesis on The Influence of
Napoleon on the Liberation of Italian Jewry.
They even showed him getting his degree on national
television. He was wearing a fine new blue suit and a
smile a mile wide. Rest in Peace.

(Jan 10, 2011)Buildings that are 400 years
old contain more
than a bit of history. Palazzo Balsorano, at via Crispi 4, at
Piazza Amedeo is certainly no exception. The date of
construction is not known exactly, but it certainly
was in the period when Spanish-built residences and
churches started to spring up along the western
seaside area called Chiaia in what was then a bucolic
setting. That puts the date somewhere around the
middle of the 1500s. The building passed into the
possession of Giambattista Manso (c.1560-1645), a
leading Neapolitan literary figure of the day. He was
the first biographer of the poet Torquato
Tasso, who was a guest in the residence in 1592
and it was here, according to some sources, that Tasso
finished his epic, Gerusalemme
Liberata. There is, in fact, a plaque still
on the building that reads

Torquato Tasso/ guest of a friend/ in 1592/ looked
from this place/ upon the fields, heavens and
harbour/ sketched the created world/ rewove
Jerusalem/ thought about friendship/ forgot
adversity/ happy with life.

Giambattista Marino (1569-1625), the leading poet of
the Baroque in Naples also stayed there, as did John
Milton (1608-1674) during his brief visit in 1638 to
Naples during his year-long Grand Tour of France and
Italy. The building eventually passed into the
possession of Ernesto Lefebvre di Balsorano
(1817-1891) after which it became a parochial
school, the Institute
of the Sacred Heart, which moved to another
location some years ago. The building is now
subdivided into numerous apartments and offices. It
is still a remarkable building if you can see past
the hustle and bustle of the streets and traffic.
The base is two stories with an ashlar facade; then,
there is a terrace with a central structure set back
from the terrace; that structure also is two stories
with a terrace on top; set back from that terrace is
yet another facade and another structure of two
stories. There is another story on top, but it looks
like an add-on to me; it's well-done, but not part
of the original building.

(Jan 28) The launching of a new
ship at the Castellammare
shipyards is normally a cause for celebration:
people congraulate each other, flags are unfurled,
sirens go off, etc. Yesterday, it was the turn of
the cruise ship, Oceania—104
meters long, 36 m. high, with 200 cabins. This time,
however, the celebrations were subdued since there
is no more such work in sight until much later in
the year, if at all. The shipbuilders' trade in
Naples is a precarious one at best. The yards have
about 700 workers, and now 300 of them are about to
get laid off.

(Feb 6) I spend time
looking at old newspapers, looking for perspective,
wisdom, coupons... maybe something to write about! I
tried searching "Vesuvius: 1870-1910" to see if I
could get something. I got the usual glum reports on
1872 and 1906 (including one great NYT article on the 1906
eruption). BUT!--it seems that some of our
journalists are not taking this eruption stuff too
seriously! Witness:

—from the Des Moines Daily
News of Nov. 15, 1898: "ACTIVITY OF
VESUVIUS. Much anxiety has been caused in Naples
by the renewed activity of Mount Vesuvius. An
overwhelming danger of this description produces
universal terror. As a matter of fact there is
little likelihood that Mt. Vesuvius will do any
serious damage. On the other hand thousands die
daily from stomach and digestive disorders, who
might have survived had they resorted to
Hostetter's Stomach Bitters. It is the greatest of
known tonics for stomach and digestive organs. It
cures kidney, liver and blood disorders.
—and this, from the
Racine (Wisconsin) Daily Journal,
June 5 1906: "No matter where you are going on
your vacation—whether it's across the ferry or
across the ocean—to visit the upheaval of Vesuvius
or the down-heaval of San Francisco, here are the
clothes for you. A special suit in a dark,
checkered grey will not show the dust, not break
in shape, nor disappoint you."
—and this—is nothing sacred?!—from the New Castle News
(Pennsylvania), Oct.21, 1904: "Vesuvius has broken
out again, and Carrie Nation is preparing for the
most picturesque rampage in her whole career.
People had better take to the collars in view of
these two afflictions."

[Ed. note:
Carrie Nation (1846-1911) was a leading member of the
temperance movement in the US before prohibition. She
was famous for her "hatchetations"—busting up
gin-mills with an axe.] I still do not know what the
expression "take to the collars" means. If you know,
please tell me. (Just in case, I have already taken to
the collars.)

(Feb
10)Attention,
Fashion Zombies! Forget about statement shoes,
"distressed" (torn) jeans, and nipple-rings for your
pets. Make a real spectacle of yourself with intarsio frames
for your glasses! Even if you have perfect eyesight,
specs with plain glass are in with the PIFI
(Pseudo-Intellectual Fashion Idiot) crowd. Intarsio (also
known as tarsia
in Italian and, in English, "intarsia") is the craft
of making designs and images from bits of inlaid wood.
It is one of the trademark handicrafts out on the
Sorrentine peninsula, and now a gentleman who sells
eye-wear in the town of Piano di Sorrento has added a
line of eye-glasses with wooden frames made from
locally crafted intarsio.
Once this craze catches on, the proprietor feels sure
he can keep the genuine local product from being
diluted by cheap foreign knock-offs. He is comforted
by the fact that there is a law in China against
exporting wood! At least, that is something he read
somewhere. There is a separate and serious entry in
this encyclopedia on Sorrentine
Intarsio.

(Feb 21)Francesco
Bandarin from UNESCO was in town a few days ago
to discuss plans to increase the area in Naples
protected as a World Heritage Site. The part of the
city currently included on the list of sites
considered worth saving as part of our common
planet-wide cultural heritage has, roughly, an area of
720 hectares (1,780 acres), much of it in the
"historic center" as seen on this
map. The plan would expand the area to include
the Sanità; that is, the
area to the north of the old city (in back of the
National Museum) and also incorporate "buffer" areas
on the south, such as the port of Naples and extend
west to include the Posillipo coast. The plan would
bring the total area "under protection" to 1600
hectares (c. 4,000 acres/6.25 sq. miles/16 sq km).
UNESCO World Heritage "protection" generally takes the
form of providing funds to assist in restoration and
maintenance.